Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

The Ecclesiastical Schools and the Clerics as Scribes.

—The so-called secular clergy were, during the earlier Middle Ages, employed very largely in connection with the business of the government, being in fact in many regions the only class of the population possessing the education necessary for the preparation of documents and the preservation of records. In Italy, towards the close of the thirteenth century, there came into existence the class of notaries who took charge of a good many business details which in Germany and France were cared for by the clergy. Under the Merovingian kings, there were government officials and judiciary officials who were laymen. During the rule of the Carlovingians, however, the writing work of the chapel and of the government offices was consolidated, falling into the hands of the clerics, or secular clergy. For a number of centuries, outside of Italy, it was very exceptional for any documents or for any correspondence to be written by other than the clergy. Every citizen of importance was obliged to have his special clericus, clerc, or pfaff, who took care of his correspondence and accounts. A post of this kind was in fact the surest means for an ambitious priest to secure in the first place, a footing in the world, and later, ecclesiastical positions and income. The secretary or chancellor of the king, was almost always, as a matter of routine, sooner or later rewarded with a bishopric.

Charlemagne took from among the poor boys in the court school, one, who was described as optimus dictator et scriptor, and having trained him as chaplain and secretary, provided for him later a bishopric.[30]

The use of the word dictator is to be noted as indicating the mediæval employment of the term in connection with writing. Dictare seems, from an early date, to have been used in the first place to indicate instruction in the art of writing, while later it is employed constantly to specify the direct work of the writer or composer, in the sense in which one would say to-day that he had indited a letter. With the same general sense, the term dictamen is used for the thing indited or for a composition. Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim (whose poems later had the honour of forming the material for one of the first books printed in South Germany), used the term dictare continually for activity in authorship. Wattenbach quotes from the Legenda Aurea of S. Ambrose the words libros quos dictabat propria manu scribebat (he wrote out with his own hand the books that he composed).

As long as any portions of the Roman Empire held together and the classic culture still preserved its influence, a considerable class of men secured their support through work as scribes. In Italy this class seems never entirely to have disappeared. Some small circles of the people retained, even after the land had been many times overrun by invaders, some interest in the classics, and were prepared to pay for more or less trustworthy manuscript copies of these. In Italy also there appears to have been a much larger use of writing in connection with trade and commerce than obtained throughout the rest of Europe until a much later time. While in Germany and France such scholarship as remained was restricted almost entirely to the ecclesiastics and to the monastery centres, in Italy the Church, during the earlier period, took a smaller interest in scholarship. There came into existence, however, a group of literary laymen, who were in a measure a continuation of or a succession to the old Latin grammarians, and who maintained some of their interest in classic culture and preserved, however imperfectly, some remnants of classic knowledge.

Wattenbach quotes the words of Gerbert,[31] Nosti Quot Scriptores in Urbibus aut in Agris Italiæ Passim Habeantur (you know how many writers there are here and there throughout the cities and fields of Italy).

The schools established under the rule of the Lombards helped to preserve the art of writing and to widen the range of its experts. By the time, therefore, of the establishment of the earlier Italian universities, an organised class of scribes was already in existence whose skill could be utilised for university work, and, as will be shown more specifically in a later chapter, the universities took these scribes under their jurisdiction and extended over them the protection of university privilege.[32]

In France, after the time of Charlemagne, it was the case, as we have seen, that those who had any educational or literary ambitions were almost necessarily obliged to become ecclesiastics, as it was only in monasteries and in the training schools attached to the monasteries, that the necessary education could be secured. As one result of this, the number of ecclesiastics increased much more rapidly than the number of places in which they could be occupied or of foundations upon which they could be supported. Priests for whom no priestly work was found became, therefore, what might be called lay-clerics, and were employed in connection with the work of the courts, or of magistrates, or as scribes and secretaries.

In this manner there came into the hands of these lay-clerics, not only the management of correspondence, personal, official, and diplomatic, but a very large proportion of the direction of the affairs with which such correspondence had to do. As far, therefore, as the clerical personality represented ecclesiastical purposes and aims, the influence of ecclesiasticism must have been very much greater during the age in which the art of writing was confined to the Church than at any earlier or any later period of the world’s history. Such influence was, however, probably less in fact than in appearance, as it seems to have been the case that a very large proportion of such clerics were priests in name only, and that their interests, purposes, and ambitions were outside of the Church, and were not necessarily even in sympathy with the development of the control of the Church over the affairs of the world.

Wattenbach is of opinion that the scribes of this period secured a larger return for their work than came to any other class of labourers or officials. Among many other examples, he gives a quotation from Dümmler concerning a Lombard cleric of Rotland, named Anselm, who, in 1050, prided himself upon the number of books he had written, and said: Multos oportet libros scriberes, ut inde precium sumeres, quo a tuis lenonibus te redimeres.[33] (You ought to write many books in order to obtain money with which to buy yourself off from those having claims upon you.)

Notker wrote in 1020 to the Bishop of Sitten, who wanted to obtain some books: Si vultis ea, sumtibus enim indigent, mittite plures pergamenas et scribentibus præmia et suscipietis eorum exempla.[34] (If you want these books, you must send more parchment and also moneys for the scribes. You will then receive your copies.)

In the twelfth century, the monks of Tegernsee, under the Abbot Rupert, were working on the production of the books for the library of some noble lady.[35] The Brother Liaupold, in Mallerstorf, spoke of having “earned much money through his pen.” This happened in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The lines quoted by Wattenbach were found upon a manuscript bearing Liaupold’s name.[36]

For the libraries of their own monasteries, the monks worked without direct pay, and it was only later, as the ambition of the librarians increased or as the business of distributing copies of manuscripts became more important, that the monasteries found it worth while to employ, either in place of or in addition to their own monks, scribes from outside. In Salzburg, Pastor Peter Grillinger paid, in 1435, to the scribes of the neighbouring monasteries three hundred gulden for the production of a Bible (probably an illuminated copy), and presented this to the library of the Cathedral.[37]

In the accounts of the monastery at Aldersbach, Rockinger finds entries, in 1304, of payments for scriptores librorum.

The well-known manuscript of Henri Bohic was written in 1374 by a monk of Corbie, who, according to the cash record of his monastery, received for his work, in addition to the parchment and other materials, the sum of thirty-six solidos. For the monastery at St. Gall, Mathias Burer, of Lindau, who was chaplain in Meminger, and who died in 1485, wrote twenty-four volumes.

In 1470, the same Burer gave to the monastery, in exchange for a benefice, his entire library. The record does not specify how many volumes the library comprised. In 1350, a certain Constantine was arrested in Erfurt as a heretic. Special efforts were made to save him from death or banishment on the ground that he was a skilled scribe. The record does not appear to show whether or not this plea was successful.

Conrad de Mure speaks of women working as scribes during the latter part of the thirteenth century. It is probable that these women were nuns, but it is not so specified. In the Histoire de l’Imprimerie[38] reference is made to a woman who appears to have acted as an independent scribe—that is to say, not to have been attached to the university or to the guild of booksellers.

On the tax list of Paris, in 1292, are recorded twenty-four escrivains.[39] It is probable that the actual number was much greater, as the scribes who were ecclesiastics were exempt from taxation, and their names, therefore, would not have appeared upon the list.

In 1460, a certain Ducret, clerc à Dijon, received from the Duke for his work as scribe, a groschen for each sheet, which is referred to as the prix accoustumé.[40]

In 1401, Peter of Bacharach, described as a citizen of Mainz, wrote out for the Court at Eltville (Elfeld) a Schwabenspiegel. This is to be noted because it is an example of scribe work being done by one who was not a cleric. Burkard Zink tells us that in 1420, being in Augsburg, he took unto himself a wife. She had nothing and he had nothing, but she earned money with her spinning-wheel and he with his pen. In the first week he wrote vier sextern des grossen papiers, karta regal, and the ecclesiastics for whom the work was being done were so well pleased with it that they gave him for two sexterns four groschen. His week’s work brought him sixteen groschen, or forty cents.[41] Clara Hatzlern, a citizen of Augsburg, is recorded as having written for money between the years 1452 and 1476. A copy of a Schwabenspiegel transcribed by her was contained in the collection at Lambach.[42]

The examples named indicate what was, in any case, probably the only class of scribe work done outside of the monasteries and outside of the universities or before the university period, by the few laymen who were able to write. Their labour was devoted exclusively to the production of books in the tongue of the people; if work in Latin were required, it was still necessary (at least until the institution in the thirteenth century of university scribes) to apply to the monasteries. With the development of literature in Italy, during the following century, there came many complaints concerning the lack of educated scribes competent to manifold the works. These complaints, as well as to the lack of writers as concerning the ignorance and carelessness shown in their work, continued as late as the time of the Humanists, and are repeated by Petrarch and Boccaccio.